What My Students Have Taught Me

I grew up through Swimtastic Swim School. As a kid, I went there for swimming lessons. That’s right. I used to be the little girl on the steps splashing her teacher and thinking she could swim, when in reality, she would only sink. I used to be the kid who was so excited to go down the slide she could hardly contain herself. Now, years later, I’m still at Swimtastic, but I hold a different role. I’m no longer that little girl smiling on the steps. I still have the smile, I’m just no longer sitting on the steps. I’m the one teaching this time. Instead of being instructed, I’m the one doing the instructing. And, although I’m the teacher, I learn a lot from my students as well. Throughout my time at Swimtastic I’ve learned the value of patience, the power of perseverance and the importance of positivity among so many other things.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned as a parent, but one of the greatest lessons I have learned from my stepson is that all things come with time. As parents we rush to help our children learn new things and new skills. We get frustrated when we don’t think they are potty-training fast enough, they won’t sit still long enough to hear a chapter from a book, they won’t capitalize their sentences or basic math seems like calculus to their developing brains. We worry that we aren’t doing a good enough job and that lacking these basic skills is going to ruin them forever. Phew. Take a breath!